welsh – Shoo Rayner

Yesterday, I showed you how I’d been illustrating winning stories from the Welsh Books Council Dahlightful schools writing competition See yesterdays video here:

Today, in part 3, I’m showing you how I illustrated a story by Finnuala Buckley from Bishop Headley High School.

The illustration required me to draw a portal in the ice. I wanted to create a Time Ripple” effect and decided the best way was use photoshop to add the effect on after I’d painted the picture.

First I cut out the drawing of the library, that you can see through the hole in the ice, and then I placed it in the layer below, so it appears “through” the hole, and distorted the library image a bit.

Then I created a ripple effect on another layer in-between and tweaked the transparency of that layer so you could see the library through it. After that, I added a bit of shadow to add depth, before cropping the image and tidying it up, ready for the printer.

I’m thrilled to have just signed a contract with Firefly Press, a brand new Welsh publisher. No, I’m not writing a book in Welsh but a book in English with a strong Welsh theme. You could be writing writing one for them too, as they have a competition to find a new writer. They are looking for:

A novel must be aimed at 7-9 year olds, written in English, 15-20,000 words long and set at least in part in contemporary Wales. We will accept stories with a realistic setting or stories with a fantasy/timeslip element, but not stories set exclusively in a fictional fantasy world that has no connection to Wales or historical stories with no contemporary content.

If you don’t know much about Wales, this probably isn’t the competition for you, but if you know a lot about Wales, then maybe this is your chance to finally get yourself into print!

Click for the Link to all the details

Tag: welsh

Illustrating Children’s Books with Photoshop Effects

Firefly Press Writing Competition – Stories in a contemporary Welsh Setting